I've decided to clear up as much clutter in my house as possible. Part of this has been eliminating hundreds of CD's that I no longer want taking up space. To this end, I've started ripping these into iTunes.

So far everything has gone perfectly. I've set iTunes to automatically import the CD on insert, ripping all the songs as mp3's. I plan on storing the CD's out of the way, either in the garage or in the attic. If I decide that I would like to listen to an album I've saved off to the library, I can either copy the files to my iPhone or burn a CD to listen to since blank CD's are so cheap.

A couple of questions I have:
- Is there a better tool for keeping and managing my library than iTunes?
- Are there any issues with having an all digital music system that I should be aware of?

iTunes has done fine so far but has a few drawbacks. Sharing could use more features. I have to sync my iPhone, an iPod nano, and an old 3rd gen iPod to the library on two different machines. It would be really nice if I could sync using the sharing features, but I need to have the library open directly on the syncing machine. This gets REALLY slow if I try to store the library on a central server and open it from there. I've ended up storing multiple copies of the library on each machine and this is a pain to keep in sync. Any suggestions?

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After my HP laptop bit the dust and I purchased my MacBook I've become interested in a NAS solution. I've been testing out two candidates -- Windows Home Server and FreeNAS. I reviewed my FreeNAS experiences first. This is my review of Windows Home Server. I have 2 PC's for testing and I'll be testing both for mac compatibility, Xbox 360 streaming capability, and general ease of use.

Starting off I knew that Windows Home Server had a much larger footprint than FreeNAS. If you recall, my server configuration for FreeNAS was my old AMD 1800+ XP and I figured I would need something a bit more up to date for WHS to be effective. I unplugged my current HD in my AMD 64 3000+ machine with 3GB of RAM and rebooted. I popped the disc in and began installation.

Installation is very similar to installing XP, same UI and process. It does take a bit longer than an XP installation and several more reboots are required. During installation I was informed that ALL drives in the computer would be formatted. I was fine with this since I had already disconnected my prior system drive...if I needed to go back I would just need to shut down and plug it back in. The installation completed and I was able to perform updates to get everything to the latest version. In case you want to get in on the action without needing to go through installation, the most popular pre-installed Home Server is the HP EX495 1.5TB Mediasmart Home Server. I've seen one of these in action, and it is very tempting...

On my FreeNAS machine I prepared for this installation by consolidating my data down to a single 500G drive and removing my rsync target drive to place in the WHS machine. WHS itself was installed on an 80G drive, and the system took 20G of space, leaving around 56G formatted for use in the drive pool. Combined with the 500G drive, this gave me a total of ~500G (formatted) of space for storage.

I opened up the Windows Home Server Console to manage the server. I added a user account for myself and gave it full access to everything. I added 2 shared folders, one for "Documents" and one for "Downloads", and I enabled Media Library Sharing on the Music, Photos, and Videos shares. Enabling remote access was easy in the console as well. I had to forward some ports on my router and enter my hotmail email address. I was assigned a *.homeserver.com url I could use from any computer to access my home server remotely. Very well done.

Taking a look in Windows Explorer, the shares could be found at D:\shares. I mapped a drive to my FreeNAS store and I copied all of my data over from the FreeNAS machine to the newly installed WHS machine. The copy took several hours. Once the copy was complete everything was immediately available to the network, media files and all.

For the Xbox 360 streaming test I have to change nothing at all. Enabling sharing on WHS did all of the work in the background and the 360 sees the server immediately. My entire music library loads extremely quickly and streaming is a breeze. My videos also load quickly and play without a hitch.

Looking in the Server Storage tab of the console I can see each drive in my server and add/remove drives from the storage pool. In the shared folders tab I find an option for folder duplication. Basically this will take whichever share I select and make sure the data is duplicated on two of the drives in the pool. I select my photos and my music for duplication. This ends up filling the smaller drive in the pool and I receive a notification of the problem. Duplication is automatically disabled for one of my shares until more space is added.

I decide to go all out and remove the 500G drive from the FreeNAS server and I add it to WHS. Adding the drive is simple, I click "Add" when I have the drive selected in the server storage tab and I am asked if I want the drive added as storage or backup. I choose storage and I'm up near 1TB of storage. I re-enable duplication and everything is good once again.

I scrounged up 2 200G drives to add to the server for 2 purposes: 1) bump me over the magical 1TB mark (now at 1.17TB!) and 2) testing out the backup features. I add one drive to the pool and I add the second as a backup drive. I configure the server to backup the Documents, Photos, Music, and Software shares. The backup proceeds without issue, and I am able to see the space used on the backup drive. This would be very useful with an external drive which could be removed and stored elsewhere once a backup is complete.

In addition to all of this, add-ins are available to add additional functionality. The most useful ones I have found so far are the Disk Management, uTorrent, and Duplication Info ones. All add-ins I have tried have worked without issue. The best place I've found for add-ins is Home Server Plus.

In addition to the built-in functionality, I was able to install uTorrent and PeerGuardian2 as services to use the box as my home torrent server. Enabling the web GUI in uTorrent and opening the assigned port on my router allows me to access uTorrent from anywhere, even on my iPhone. How handy is that?

Other notes in the comparison of FreeNAS and Windows Home Server: FreeNAS supports afp and a host of other sharing protocols and WHS does not, WHS supports adding any type of drive to the drive pool (I currently have 3 IDE, 2 SATA, and 1 USB drive) and while FreeNAS supports these, there is no pool of space, WHS media sharing is superior by far, and WHS backup features are easier to configure. The only thing I have remaining to test is backups from my mac laptops using Time Machine.

FreeNAS is a great product with a few drawbacks and the price is right. Windows Home Server just gets everything right and with my MSDN subscription the price becomes a non-issue. The biggest plus for WHS is the drive pool and how it is managed. In FreeNAS if the drive you store your movies on runs out of space, you'll have to do some work to add a new drive and get the shares sorted out...with WHS you just add a drive and put it in the pool. Having been a Windows user since Windows 3.1, I am completely blown away at how easy configuration of this system is. Adding drives, removing drives, backing up data, sharing media, it's all there in the console application.

The winner for me is Windows Home Server. Thanks for reading!

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After my HP laptop bit the dust and I purchased my MacBook I've become interested in a NAS solution. I've been testing out two candidates -- Windows Home Server and FreeNAS. I'll review my FreeNAS experiences first. I have 2 PC's for testing and enough hard drives to test both side by side for mac compatibility, Xbox 360 streaming capability, and general ease of use.

FreeNAS was the first NAS solution I've attempted to use. Booting up was a cinch and I was off and running with the live CD. I plugged up the trusty old HP and popped in the CD. Deciphering the text through the video artifacts wasn't too difficult and I managed to get the system installed onto a 64MB CF card. After a quick reboot and a few clicks to assign a static IP I was up and ready to get managing the system.

The web GUI that comes with FreeNAS is quite spartan but works extremely well once you have experience with it. I was able to follow along with the online installation guide to get my 100G internal HDD mounted and formatted UFS (the required format for the system). Once complete, I turned on AFP for my Mac upstairs and I copied down my iTunes library. The 35G or so of data copied down relatively quickly, and from my laptop I was able to update my configuration in iTunes to point to the new library location and viola!

This level of success so quickly spurred me to going a bit larger with this experiment. I have the following hard drives available for testing: 1 500G external, 1 internal 500G, 1 80G internal, and 1 13G internal. I also have 2 PC's that I can use for testing. The server I choose to use for FreeNAS is an AMD 1800+ XP with 512MB RAM. I install the 13G drive along with the internal 500G drive and pop in the live CD. Installing to the smaller HDD is easy once again. I format the 500G drive and load it up with all of my data.

I have an Xbox 360 ready and waiting for some streaming content, so I turn on the UPnP service. Fuppes (the name of the UPnP service) is configured by pointing it to your media files using the web GUI. Once turned on you must complete a database rebuild and a virtual container rebuild, and if you have a large number of files this can be an extensive process. Amazingly enough once this was complete I was able to stream my DivX files to the 360 with no issues whatsoever.

FreeNAS also has built in iTunes/DAAP streaming, but I found it to be too buggy to use. It seemed to work ok from a client perspective, but cpu usage would max out on the poor server until I gave it the old kill -9 command. I'll be researching this further.

A bittorrent client is also built in (Transmission). This comes with it's own web GUI and it seems to work flawlessly. I'm highly impressed with this portion of the server. If only they could allow blocklists to be more easily enabled. FTP services are built in and work as expected.

All in all, I'm highly impressed...ESPECIALLY for a 100% free piece of software. Some services I have not had a chance to try out so far are iSCSI, RSYNC, and the web server.

My final plan is to select between this and Windows Home Server, then use my two 500G drives in a mirrored fashion. Right now, FreeNAS has a formidable lead.

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While it seems like a dream job, maybe it's not all so wonderful. I'm not sure how I would handle this type of situation. I'm still interested in learning app development for the iPhone, but things like this take some of the shine off of the platform. Lots of folks have visions of grandeur and hope to be the next big thing, but if you have to wait 6 months for a payment...

I'd almost guarantee they aren't having any trouble taking their 30% cut and getting it into the bank. How can they still be behind on FEBRUARY payments? That's quite a tremendous lag time, even if there are some issues. And the reply from Apple does nothing to quiet the issue. You can't just tell people "we know we're slow, but shut up and wait" and expect anyone to be happy about it.

Hopefully this really is a series of errors caused by overwhelming demand and things will be ironed out over the next couple of weeks.
Apple drives iPhone app developers to the brink

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Looks like Apple may be getting ready to expand beyond the AT&T network. Evidently Verizon has been in talks with them about creating TWO new devices to be run on their network. What a coup this would be for Verizon, but there's still a ways to go.

According to the article at Information Week, Apple already has prototypes of the two devices. One is described as an "iPhone lite" and the other is some sort of media pad. This is interesting because there would be no direct competitor to the iPhone 3G currently sold on the AT&T network.

Verizon and Apple have been in talks in the past when the original iPhone was being pushed, but Verizon did not like the terms of the deal. I'll bet they have changed their tune now, with the wild success the iPhone has had. It could be argued that this is all just a ploy by Apple to get better terms out of AT&T, but why would there be prototypes of the devices already crated? I believe they are serious about deploying.

New Gear from Apple and Verizon Wireless?

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What an absolute dream come true for the folks at Lexcycle. To spend a year working on a company and watch it become a hot enough commodity to be scooped up by one of the big guys on the block would be very exciting...and profitable to boot. The best quote: "Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed."

I have used the Stanza iPhone application for a while now, and it is high quality. Connected up to several e-book providers there was no shortage of content. While the article claims that no changes to the application are planned, we all know how that eventually turns out. Especially since Amazon has a close cousin in the Kindle application.

I hope the app stays free and gets even better than it currently is. Congrats to the folks at Lexcycle!

Amazon Buys Maker of iPhone E-Book Reader Stanza

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It's so easy. We've all had to deal with it. I've had to deal with it while writing this post with the TV on in the room. Some call it laziness, others claim it's just a lack of motivation. These descriptions diminish just how sinister it truly is. It is procrastination, and it must be avoided at all costs.

Completely discounting personal projects, if you have ever had a job with a deadline you've probably dealt with procrastination. Staring at that deadline that is seemingly far in the future, before you know it you've allowed an hour or two to slip by with no productivity. This tends to build upon itself, and eventually you look at the tasks ahead of you and there is no way to complete them on time.

Part of the problem seems to be accountability. This is offered by default in a team environment, but if you are starting up on your own you'll quickly find that no one is there to push you. You must set deadlines for yourself and HOLD to them. Can you impose a punishment on yourself for missing a deadline? Will you just let your tasks slip and have nothing to show for your initial drive?

A lack of motivation could also cause you to procrastinate. Even if you are doing something you feel passionate about, you'll have days where you simply don't feel like doing the work. Most of the time this is something you should tackle head-on...just make yourself get right to work. Start with something that is an easy win and go for it, promising yourself a small break once it is complete. I have found that this can spur my drive in unexpected ways and I may even cut my promised break a bit short.

Finally, disorganization or a general lack of direction could cause the problem. You find yourself meandering all over the place, not really focused on any single task. In this case begin a task list. Just write down everything you think of that needs to be done and prioritize. If you are working on a project for yourself this could be the toughest problem to tackle. You may not even know what needs to be done next. In this case you should make it a priority to find a mentor, or at least someone who has been where you are and can answer some questions to get you on track.

Unrealistic expectations can destroy your motivation, so avoid them at all costs. Manage those expectations from the very beginning, whether they are internal or external. Discipline yourself and try to develop a rhythm to your work, and you'll find the accomplishments begin to pile up. Otherwise the worst thing possible will happen: nothing.

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Lately we've had some breathless reporting of the swine flu that is apparently making the rounds. Around 160 dead in Mexico and the number is rising, with around 1200 infections. Here's something you can use to put your mind at ease, or if you are in one of the marked areas, incite panic within yourself.

H1N1 Swine Flu - Google Maps
Here we see one of the many uses of Google maps. Different color markers are displayed where there are suspected, confirmed, and negative cases. Deaths from the disease are also marked. Surprisingly, there are quite a few markers displayed in Europe.

We've been lucky here in the US so far, as there have been no fatalities. Hopefully this virus will wind down quickly and the infections will be brought under control.

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Well, my old trusty HP laptop finally bit the dust. Evidently something went wrong with the on-board video and now it no longer boots into a graphical interface properly. There are artifacts displayed even while in text mode...I've never seen anything like it. Output to an external monitor contains the same artifacting.

This was the strangest thing, one minute everything is working fine. I place the laptop down and go do some laundry, have some lunch, and when I come back the thing has locked up. The power button is still responsive so I do a hard shutdown and the first thing I notice is the vertical green artifacts on the HP splash screen...not good. When in text mode there are vertical pipes (|) scattered all over the screen. Could this be memory that has gone bad? The video controller itself (nVidia 7600 Go)? I have no idea. I allowed the laptop to cool to no avail, when starting any graphical OS the mouse cursor looks fine but the rest of the screen is completely garbled and unusable.

The good thing is that large parts of the laptop are salvageable. The 17" screen should make a nice item to be placed on eBay. I haven't decided how I'm going to try selling it off just yet, but if you would like part or all of it please send me an email at mbs@techbustr.com. I will consider offers. The specs are as follows:

• Intel Core Duo (1.73GHz I believe)
• 1GB DDR2 667MHz RAM
• nVidia 7600 Go (with aforementioned issues)
• 17" glossy LCD
• The model number is dv8300
• I'll add more info later

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Microsoft is set to release the Release Candidate of Windows 7 by April 30 on their MSDN and TechNet sites and to a broader audience on May 5. If you haven't had the opportunity to use Windows 7 just yet, you don't know what you're missing. It is what Vista should have been.

The most obvious addition to this version of Windows is the new superbar. When I first saw it I wanted it GONE. Where is my quick launch toolbar? It's what I've used for years! I didn't know what I was missing until I read about it...now there's no need for any other launcher.


While it appears very similar to the OS X launcher at first glance, more functionality is readily available. All windows spawned by an application on the superbar are available by clicking and dragging up on the icon. Mouseover an icon with open windows and you'll be treated to a clickable preview popup that shows a thumbnail image of each open application window. The right click menu offers loads of extra functionality.

For a full overview of the Windows 7 superbar, check this Neowin post.

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